Explore the History of Nevada along with Nevada Day's 2021 theme: Historic Moments in Nevada

This story is featured in the official Nevada Day Program, which can be found for free along the parade route this Saturday. Grab your copy for the parade line up, information about events, stories and more!

This year, the Nevada Day Parade committee chose "Historic Moments in Nevada" as the theme for 2021. Explore the interesting history of Nevada below in preparation for this year's parade!

Nevada, Mexico
Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to explore the area we know as Nevada, which at the time was claimed by the Washoe, Paiute and Shoshone tribes. The Spanish dubbed the region Nevada, which translates to “snow-capped.” The region was originally part of New Spain, until Mexico gained its independence in 1821, carrying Nevada with it. It wasn’t until 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American war that the U.S. came to own the territory, which then became a part of the Utah Territory in 1850. It was due to the Comstock Lode and the resulting increase in population that the region separated into the Nevada Territory in 1861.

The Comstock Lode
In 1849, a discovery of gold was made by Mormon ’49ers headed towards California to seek their fortunes. The initial discovery was made at the Carson River, near what would later become Dayton.
However, it wasn’t until 1859 and the discovery of the Comstock Lode that the true silver rush began. As miners tried their best to seek their gold fortunes, they were hampered constantly by a thick blue mud that was the bane of every gold miner. When one miner took the mud to be analyzed, it was determined to be incredibly rich in both silver and gold, and the boom began.

Between 1876 and 1878, the peak years for the Comstock Lode, miners pulled $36 million from the earth each year — nearly a billion dollars per year in today’s money.

The Battle Born State
On Oct. 31, 1864 during the height of the Civil War, Nevada became the 36th state, joining the Union in its war against the South. The path to statehood was rushed, including the fact that the Constitution of Nevada was sent by telegraph to the U.S. Congress only days before the presidential election, which is still the largest and costliest transmission ever made across the wires. The rush was deemed necessary at the time to help President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection bid.

Nevada paves the way in voting rights — for some
In 1869, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, granting all American men the right to vote, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Nevada was the first state to ratify the 15th Amendment, paving the way for the rest of the U.S. to ensure that freed slaves could head to the polls. However, this new freedom did not extend to women or other people of color, especially Chinese immigrants and Native Americans, neither of which were deemed to be U.S. citizens under the 14th amendment. It wasn’t until 1924 that Native Americans were granted citizenship, and not until 1952 that all Asian-Americans were granted full citizenship and the right to vote. Nevada was particularly involved in keeping Chinese railway workers from voting due to their extensive populations within the Silver State.

Divorce Capital of the World
After the silver and gold boom that began with the Comstock Lode petered out, Nevada’s population — and economy —- began to quickly decline. Nevada boomtowns were fading into ghost towns one after another, but in the early 1900s, Reno chose to go after another boom: the divorce boom. In 1861, the Nevada territory had set residency requirements at six months, which was continued on into statehood. Divorce laws in other states were extremely varied; in some states, women weren’t even allowed to sue for divorce, and were rarely allowed to retain property if a divorce was granted.

Some states would refuse to grant a divorce unless there could be bonafide proof of one guilty party, and the charges were often difficult to prove. In the early 1900s, Nevada had begun to carve its way towards being the top destination for a “quickie” divorce, as Nevada courts did not require much evidence for divorce, knowing how important the influx of people was for Nevada’s dwindling economy. In 1927, Nevada shortened its residency period even more to only three months, and only a few years later in 1931, it was shortened again to only six weeks, at the same time formally legalizing gambling throughout the state.

Gambler’s Paradise
While the Old West invariably brings up images of saloons filled with gaming tables and festive ladies of the night, gambling was technically illegal during its infancy. In 1861, the territorial legislature enacted penalties for either running or participating in any game of chance. In 1869, certain games of chance were finally decriminalized, but not for long; in 1909 gambling would be outlawed, with some mild exceptions, which continued until 1931 in the Silver State. Following the depression, Nevada took the opportunity for a new economic vision, and allowed “wide-open gambling” to begin. Reno set the stage for the resurgence of gambling, appealing to those stationed in the city while waiting for their residency to receive easy divorces. In the 1930s, four Las Vegas clubs were the first to become licensed under the new law, and in the 1940s, the Las Vegas Strip was born.

The Birth of Las Vegas
In 1941, the El Rancho Las Vegas spanning 57-acres was opened by Thomas Hull, becoming the first Las Vegas Strip resort. Following suit was The Last Frontier, opened in 1942, then Bugsy Siegel’s famous Flamingo in 1946, which is thought of by many as Las Vegas’s first luxury resort on the strip. The first Nevada state tax on gaming was collected in 1946, which took 1 percent of all gross earnings from casinos, which resulted in $670,000 — over $9.5 million in today’s money. In order to keep a check on the “criminal element” running casinos across the state, the Nevada Legislature passed a bill allowing the State Tax Commission to investigate the background of anyone applying for a gaming license.

The Hoover Dam
Las Vegas owes its early growth in part due to the construction of the Hoover Dam. The project put thousands to work, and cost the lives of over 100 men in the process. Beginning in the early 20th century, the Black Canyon and Boulder Canyon had been surveyed for their potential to support a dam, which could produce hydroelectric power, in addition to agricultural uses.

In 1928, Congress authorized the project and construction began in 1931 at the height of the Depression. Boulder City was constructed to house the thousands of workers needed to construct the dam. However, because then-president Herbert Hoover ordered construction to begin earlier, ahead of Boulder City, many workers and their families had to live in a shantytown they called “Ragtown” and many died of heat stroke in July of 1931. Across construction of the dam, there were 112 reported deaths associated with the construction, the first of whom was J.G. Tierney, a surveyor who drowned during a flash flood in 1922.

The last official death occurred in 1935, when J.G. Tierney’s son Patrick fell from an intake tower. Deaths were not recorded for what many workers alleged were caused by carbon monoxide poisonings, officially diagnosed as “pneumonia,” allegedly classified as such so the company did not have to pay compensation.

There were 42 workers who were recorded as having died of pneumonia, despite the fact that no deaths occurred in Boulder City outside of those working in the gas-filled tunnels. The dam was completed in March of 1936, and was recognized in the 1980s on the National Register of Historic Places.

Nevada’s Ladies of the Night
Nevada is the only state in the union that allows legal, regulated prostitution, a call back to its history in the wild, wild west. When individuals made their way west to seek their fortunes at the gold fields, they were overwhelmingly members of the male population. Without established shelters, let alone towns, many men chose to leave their wives and children in the east as they made their way across what was at that time the western territories.

As gold towns began to spring up, certain industrious women made their way west as well. Brothels have been legal in Nevada since the middle of the 19th century, but regulation only began in the late 1930s, when a law was enacted requiring health checks on a weekly basis to all brothel-workers. At that time, brothels weren’t only in the rurals, but in the red-light districts of Reno and Las Vegas as well.

However, in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order to suppress any prostitution near military bases, and by 1951, brothels in cities were officially closed down as “public nuisances.” In 1971, the owner of the Mustang Ranch asked county officials to enact an ordinance requiring brothels to be licensed, thereby avoiding the possibility of being closed down as a public nuisance. In response, Las Vegas officials requested that the Nevada State Legislature enact an additional ordinance that prostitution be prohibited in counties with a population of more than 700,00 which only applied to Clark County. Today, seven counties in Nevada have active brothels, all within rural counties, with 21 legal brothels distributed throughout.

Nuclear Testing in Southern Nevada
In the desert only 65 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada made history as one of the most significant nuclear weapons testing sites in the U.S. Both under and above ground testing took place between 1951 and 1992, beginning with the detonation of the 1-kiloton Shot Able, part of Operation Ranger which was dropped on Frenchman Flat on Jan. 27, 1951.

In total, 1,021 nuclear tests would take place until 1992, the majority of which were held underground. For those above ground, the mushroom clouds actually increased tourism for Las Vegas, during which tourists would head to the city for “dawn parties,” complete with atomic-themed beverages, while they would view the tests in the distance. However, during the 60s, increasing concerns about health risks associated with the testing caused a ban on all atmospheric testing in the desert, which was a part of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty joined by the Soviet Union and the U.K., outlawing atmospheric, underwater or space testing. When underground explosions also ended in 1992, the Department of Energy reported that the site is one of the most radioactively contaminated locations in the country. Today, tourists are taken on monthly public tours through the test site, which is also home to counter-terrorism training exercises relating to

Black Rock City and it’s Burning Men
Each summer, tens of thousands of individuals pour into Northern Nevada, heading to the black Rock Desert to create a temporary city, complete with art installations, roller rinks, restaurants, and more. Burning Man began as a free beach bonfire held on the summer solstice in San Francisco with a little over 30 participants, until it moved to the Nevada desert in the early 90s. In 1991, the festival, known by then as Burning Man, was given a legal permit for the first time, and had about 250 participants attending. In 1997, the event was moved into Washoe County’s area of the black rock desert near Fly Ranch, and boasted 10,000 participants for the first time. By 2019, 80,000 people attended the festivities, with tickets ranging from $190 to $1,400, with over 1,500 theme camps, 600 mutant vehicles, and 400 art installations.

Aliens in the Desert
Area 51 sits just on the edge of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site atop the salt flat of Groom Lake. The base has fascinated the masses for decades as rumors of mysterious flying objects in the skies have been reported time and time again, leading to both conspiracies of extraterrestrial visitations, as well as alien-themed kitschy tourist hotspots. Much of what is known about the base is highly classified.

Construction of what would become Area 51 started with the building of a runway during World War II. It would later be used to test the Lockheed U-2 spy plane for the CIA, which was presented to the public as a weather research airplane. Rumors of extraterrestrials seem to have begun sometime in the 1980s, alleging the base had been created for a multitude of government conspiracies, everything from housing captured aliens to developing weather control and time machines. The small community of Rachel near the base has become a popular tourist destination for alien-lovers, who can spend time at the A’Le’Inn restaurant and motel, or visit the Alien Cowpoke General Store.

Women run Nevada
Nevada became the first and only state to ever have a female majority State Legislature in 2018, bringing the total seats held by women to 33 out of 63 seats in the Legislature. Women held nine of 21 seats in the State Senate, and 24 of 42 seats in the Assembly, comprising 57 percent within that chamber.

The scales were tipped after two women, Rochelle Thuy Nguyen and Beatrice Angela Duran, both of Las Vegas, were appointed to fill two vacancies in the state Assembly. Women first gained the right to vote in 1914 in Nevada, and in 1916, the first woman to run for State Legislature was Jean Dwyer from Washoe County. While she did not succeed, it was only two years later in 1918 that Sadie Dotson Hurst of Washoe County, a supporter of prohibition, was elected to the Nevada Legislature as the first woman to serve in Nevada History. Exactly 100 years later, the State Legislature became the first female-led majority in the nation.

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